The present invention is related to radio transceiver integrated circuits (ICs), and more particularly, to a method to reduce the complexity and increase the performance of a radio IC.
The design and development of radio ICs often involves optimizing one or more of several attributes of the IC. Examples of such attributes are: IC development duration and risk (e.g., time to market), power consumption, on-chip noise, silicon area (to reduce overall chip size) and the number of connection pins. Reducing the number of pins on the radio IC may provide significant power consumption improvements, and mitigate development risks.
A signal interface connection system and method is needed for connecting a radio IC with a baseband signal processing IC or similar signal processing device using a minimum number of pins, and supporting circuitry that does not unduly add to the silicon area, power consumption and development risk to the radio IC.